Deborah Alma's poems are gloriously pungent, teeming with colours, textures and smells. In True Tales of the Countryside, her debut pamphlet, Alma writes vividly about sex, love and ageing in rural Shropshire and Wales, and reflects on her experiences as a mixed-race, British-Asian woman. Eyeballs pop, fresh piss steams and women come loudly in poems which often startle with their honesty and intimacy.

Deborah Alma has an MA in Creative Writing, teaches Writing Poetry at Worcester University and uses poetry to assist communication with people with dementia. Last year she was Writer in Residence for the Arvon Foundation at The Hurst and for the NHS Mental Health and Wellbeing Conference 2013. She is also the Emergency Poet.